The following is reprinted from the February 2023 issue of Forum Letter.
Orality, Intertextuality, and the Revised Common Lectionary
Amy C. Schifrin
Canonical, calendrical, ecumenical, and eucharistic: lectionaries at their best have worked hand in hand with the liturgical calendar, the doxological catechism that carries us forward from baptism to Christian burial. Together with the propers of the mass and the hymns of the church, a common lectionary puts the doxological content of the church year into our ears, our mouths, our hearts, and our lives. And it does this with some of its greatest strength as it provides the biblical passages for preachers to open for their congregations. While a daily lectionary is employed to bring the fullness of the scriptures into our spiritual practices with the seasonal orderings of the church year, the Sunday lectionary works both diachronically (in the juxtapositioning of the appointed texts for a given Sunday) and synchronically (as week follows week throughout the year) to fill us up, but not in a static way, for the texts of each week lean towards the next, with each liturgical season having its own arc.
No satisfaction!
Lectionaries do change over time and yet there is always as much grumbling among clergy about the changes in scriptural “diet” given in the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) as there was when the children of Israel were given manna in the desert. Some pastors do their best imitation of Mick Jagger as they cry, “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction,” because no new lectionary has ever been fully to their liking. They may nostalgically seek to return to the historic one- or two-year lectionaries, or to some iteration of “preacher’s choice,” as it is now often masked with fancy thematic, agendized, or narrative titles, or as in an even more self-aggrandizing way--prepared on one’s own without any ecclesial or ecumenical conversation. Part of that has to do with how ritual functions in creating a sense of what is natural and “right,” because ritual works through our bodies, not just through our thoughts. It works through years and years of whole-body repetition. It’s why, having grown up as a Jew in the synagogue, I have a hard time praying the psalter without voicing the words aloud with some musical inflection along with a repetitive bodily rocking movement (davening) that takes me inside the words.
In more recent years, I remember having a conversation with a long-retired New Testament scholar. Forty-five years after Vatican II’s Lectionary for Mass and the subsequent creation of the Common Lectionary, he was still complaining about the inclusion of Old Testament lessons in the Sunday lectionary that came with Vatican II’s desire for the people of God to receive “richer fare” through the appointed readings at Sunday Mass. My friend’s formation within the Lutheran household had happened before the addition of a first reading coming from the Old Testament, and he blamed all this folderal around social justice on the inclusion of so many prophetic texts. His concern was for all things heard to be Christologically centered, and he did not see the beauty that comes when one or more texts from each testament worked dialogically as a commentary, echo, or rupture into a new world.
When the appointed texts are sounded in the presence of each other and in the midst of the eucharistic assembly, those who are gathered have the opportunity to hear each text a new living conversation, for as the calendrical context highlights scripture’s intertextuality, it opens a deeper entry into the canonical context. The result is that we may be brought into the presence of the one, who while he walked this earth, lived inside the words of the law and the prophets. He did not dismiss them but opened them to be heard in their fulness. And as we know, his preaching created a lot of folderal, too.
Spiritual classics
Lections, selected readings (or pericopes, which means cuttings) are often referred to as “spiritual classics.” In general, they are scriptural verses that form a unit intended for public oral presentation. It is through their repetition in fixed cycles that we experience something of their orality. Through their repetition, they come to have a familiarity, and we long to hear them as they come to us in the current three-year cycle.
They also function in some ways as a canon within the canon because they become interpretive guides as they are embedded within our memories and through our associations with an appointed text and the liturgical year, especially on festival days or in festival seasons. (Can you imagine a Palm Sunday without hearing of Jesus triumphal entry into Jerusalem?) In Scripture and Memory: The Ecumenical Hermeneutic of the Three-year Lectionaries, Fritz West reminds us that lectionaries carry the appointed texts within the Christological memory of the liturgical year, and that it is the paschal mystery as it is manifested in the eucharist that is the primary mode of interpretation for all the texts that are proclaimed in that given day.
All liturgical texts (including scripture) have what liturgical scholars refer to as “thick” meaning, or layers of meaning. Some of these texts are very much beloved; and as every preacher knows, some of these texts are “difficult”—often because we just don’t want to preach on them, or maybe we don’t want to hear them ourselves because through them the law accuses us individually.
But when scriptural classics that have been loved and sounded through the centuries are given to preachers in a repeated cycle, each time a beloved or especially difficult text comes before us, we may discover even greater meaning as we return to the same texts having lived through the ups and downs of our lives and our wider communities. Sometimes we can’t get to what’s going on in text the first or second time we preach. But maybe, just maybe, that third time through, the Spirit has had enough time to open us up to what we could not see in the past.
Reading aloud
Let us not forget that texts convey meaning not only through the content of what is read but through the fact that they are read, for the authority of a written text, ritually speaking, gains in gravitas through its oral/aural presence in the sacred frame of the eucharistic gathering. For just like on the road to Emmaus, all that was spoken going back to Moses and the prophets gained in meaning when the bread was broken, for it is through ritual that meaning is conveyed in an incarnate, living way. Because we receive both the Bible and any lectionary in print, it is easy to forget their oral/aural character and to imbue that which is written as having greater authority than that of its performance, the event of such words being sounded in the assembly.
But these words were not written down to exist as a book that one could pick up and read. They were written on scrolls to be spoken aloud, so that an assembly of two or three, (Mt 18.20) or two or three thousand could be, “called, gathered, and enlightened by the Holy Spirit.”
Unpacking the RCL and its derivatives
For those who want to examine the history and hermeneutics of the Revised Common Lectionary, I recommend three helpful sources:
(1) The website of the Consultation on Common Texts, commontexts.org/rcl/
(2) The Revised Common Lectionary: 20th Anniversary Edition (ISBN 978-1451436037)
(3) Fritz West, Scripture and Memory: The Ecumenical Hermeneutic of the Three-Year Lectionaries (ISBN 978-0814661574). Dr. West has done some superb work on how the ecumenical hermeneutic of the RCL works to balance communal memory (oral event) and written memory (biblical text) and what happens when the same readings are received in different liturgical contexts.
It is also helpful to know that the RCL is a resource that has been adapted in unique ways buy different denominational expressions. Presbyterians have expanded the particular lections more than any other groups. Episcopalians have shortened them the most. Some Lutherans (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada) have stayed the closest to the resource, and some have made wider changes in a more sectarian manner, including “heritage texts” (Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod and SOLA publishing). SOLA promotes the LCMS lectionary in both the North American Lutheran Church and Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ, although not all NALC congregations are using the lectionary adaptation as published by SOLA.
In addition, the Anglican Church in North America has now moved further from the RCL in providing whole chapters of the scriptures, rather than lections, closer to the manner in which one might receive the scriptural text through a Bible study. The Revised Common lectionary was organized for eucharistic worship, not for Bible study. Its hermeneutic seeks to keep the unity of word and sacrament as essential to the witness of the church, and it was arranged so that the baptized would be called into a living and joyous union with the one who died and was raised and rules for all eternity.
So, when thinking about the interrelatedness between the lectionary and the presence of Christ alive among us, remember that he, too, was once called upon to speak for all to hear from an appointed second lesson from the lectionary of his day (haftorah), and that, indeed, the Spirit of the Lord was upon him.
Amy Schifrin is Associate Professor (ret.) of Liturgy & Homiletics at North American Lutheran Seminary and Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, PA, and Semi- nary President Emeritus at the North American Lutheran Seminary. She now resides in Colorado.
